I saw this this morning, a quote from Chuck Norris on the passage of Prop 8:

“The truth is that the great majority of Prop. 8 advocates are not bigots or hatemongers. They are American citizens who are following 5,000 years of human history and the belief of every major people and religion: Marriage is a sacred union between a man and a woman. Their pro-Prop. 8 votes weren’t intended to deprive any group of its rights; they were safeguarding their honest convictions regarding the boundaries of marriage.

On Nov. 4, the pro-gay community obviously was flabbergasted that a state that generally leans left actually voted right when it came to holy matrimony. But that’s exactly what happened; the majority of Californians — red, yellow, black and white — voted to define the margins of marriage as being between one man and one woman. California is the 30th state in our union to amend its constitution in doing so, joining Florida and Arizona in this election. Like it or not, it’s the law now. The people have spoken.”

I’m struck by the unbelievable hypocrisy of this. Not the unbelievably hypocrisy of the mere position of demanding that marriage be ONLY between a man and a woman, but the staggering hypocrisy of those final two sentences: “Like it or not, it’s the law now. The people have spoken.”

Sure, Chuck. I’m sure you feel that way about all laws, right? Like, say, my right to choose?

If the right wing and hatemongers really want us to believe that they support the law because it is law, then they have to stop spouting this nonsense about taking away our right to choose. If they want to topple that law, then they have to articulate that one can and one should actively oppose the laws they don’t support, and shut up about our protest of Prop 8, which will hopefully be put up to ANOTHER vote, or simply declared unconstitutional, since it is so incredibly discriminatory. Either way, they can’t have it both ways, and I am so, so very tired of listening to them try to.

Can we please, please, put the right wing on mute for a couple months? Please?

I saw this originally posted by Rich over at FourFour. It is something everyone should see. It is something everyone should listen to. We should never even consider taking away the rights of anyone to love and marry whomever they want. At a time of great celebration and great change, a time of opportunity and hope, to have such a dark, ugly shadow cast across our progress is sickening.

John McCain gave an excellent, moving, and heartfelt concession speech. It warmed my heart and my soul, through and through, to see that the thoughtful, respectful and intelligent Senator who I had much respect for at the beginning of this whole shebang was still under that GOP-shellacked-shell somewhere. Well done, McCain. And please, don’t ever let the GOP turn you into such a crazy, angry, ridiculous old man again. You are better than that.

Hold on. Let’s take a moment to look at that picture. Oh man, is that a pretty picture.

World, I totally understand how you’re feeling right now. That is a damn pretty picture, and these are extraordinary days. You’ve all be holding your breath almost as long as we have, watching this election with an intensity that we have certainly never, ever devoted to any of your elections. This is major, for you as our allies and our enemies, as the countries we continue to have some sort of magical hold over since we are America and you are, simply, the World.

That sounds really cocky , but it’s true. Why else would you care so much? Despite the fact that it is no longer the 20th century, and we are no longer fighting the Cold War (althoug Cold War II looks like it might be coming up around the corner… but hey, that’s what we’ve got Obama for right? Ahhhh, President Obama!), we are still apparently the world’s greatest Super Power and the mistakes of the last 8 years (the mistakes? the unmitigated disaster!) have affected you, our friends and neighbors to the North, South, East and West, almost as much as they’ve affected us here at home.

Some of you have been truly wonderful to us, as we’ve travelled abroad during the Bush presidency. You’ve seen us as individuals, humans, Americans who are not defined by the great fuck up in our government. You see that we did not all support that misguided dictator, that we were fighting as hard as we could to take our country back. You soothed us with words and with reassurances that you do not hate us all universaly. You reaffirmed the notion that Americans, no matter what their government does, can and will be liked internationally. And that came as a great relief to us who watched with so much dismay as our country seemed to crumble around us.

You were our cheerleaders during this election, putting (sometimes ridiculous) pressure on us to elect the right man. And we did it. And we are thankful, truly thankful, that you had our back for the last eight years and this election. But. But.

You did not vote in this election, we did. You did not transform with this election, we did. And you need to back off just a little bit and let us celebrate this great victory and great change amongst ourselves.

I have become exceedingly weary, in the last eight years but the last two in particular, of hearing people (and, for some reason, this is particularly prevalent among Canadians) tell me why I should do what I already know I should do: vote for Obama. I am tired of hearing the mantras about everything we’ve done wrong (qualified, always, with “Well, I know you’re not doing it, personally, but Bush…”), and all the ways in which we’ve fucked up. There is an element of glee in the voices of those who so cynically assessed my country, a great country, a country without which the world as we know it today would look very, very different. Intellectually, I can understand this: to see a country rise so quickly to such unprecedented power, to experience them wandering the world and claiming things and triumphs as their own without much regard as to the efforts of the countries they were supporting; I would get annoyed by that, too. It’s hard not to gloat a little bit when they make a huge misstep; when they stumbled badly, and almost fall. There is an element of personal vindication when you see the Super Power is not perfect, or even infallable.

But it was unneccessary. You forget that we all had to live through someone STEALING an election, from under our noses, before our eyes. You forget that we had to live through the PAIN of 9/11, a pain from which many of us are still recovering, a pain that came immediately after the devestation of watching one party steal the government for themselves, perverting the great ideals of democracy in one fell swoop. And then we were left, helpless, unable to get the maniac out of office, unable to take back the legistlative branch, unable to bring back the BALANCE that is so central to a working democracy. The country, the citizens, AMERICANS, felt like they were drowning in their own homeland. It has been a very, very difficult eight years.

We knew all that. We were acutely aware of it. Your assessment of our failure wasn’t needed, although we listened because we’ve done much the same thing to other countries. We took it in. We were polite about it. But beneath the surface there was one angry, challenging question: “Oh yeah? Well, what have you done for the world lately, eh?”

As a country we have taken, in the last century, a remarkable amount of responsibility for other countries onto our shoulders. We have intervened, as best we could, to protect our allies from the oppression and danger of the Soviet Union, to give aid to countries in need, to provide protection and help to people in danger. Have we done so perfectly? No. Have we ousted good leaders and replaced them with terrible dictators? Yes. Have we funded militia movements and later abandoned them, setting ourselves up for attacks and anti-American movements? Yes. Have we misplaced our trust in leaders who were bad, and been stuck supporting them for years? Yes. Have we turned against our own allies (or tentative allies) without good reason? Yes. But, have we at least tried to be an active and aggressive force for good in the world? YES. We have put ourselves out there, which is a helluva lot more than a lot of you guys can say.

We are happy, now, at the dawn of a new American era. We are happy you are happy, World, because we want to be friends with you, we want to get along, we want to live harmoniously and go back to being that force for good that we once were and always knew we could be again. We want to be on your side. But this is an eletion we won for ourselves. We weren’t thinking about you when we voted for Obama. Sure, we need to improve our standing in the world, but that was not our first priority. The real tragedy of the Bush Administration was how thoroughly it broke our American Spirit, our American Dream. How deeply divided and pained the country has been from the inside out; how much faith we have lost in ourselves. On Tuesday, as we waited in long lines to cast a single, hugely important, vote, we renewed our vows with our country: We took back our land, our people, and our spirit from those who would have broken it to gain their own power and wealth, and we pledged to each other, as Americans, that we would be brothers and sisters, citizens united with the common goal of making America back into the promised land it was for so long.

Thank you, thank you, World, for your kind words. But this is a victory we will celebrate by ourselves, with ourselves. So please stop telling us you are “proud” of our choice, like we are children who needed your guidance to pick the apple over the poison. We made up our own minds, like big girls and boys, and we are sure as hell proud to be Americans again.

If you watched the debate last night, you were probably impressed with the disgusting Mrs. Palin. No huge gaffes, no stunning mistakes. But if you actually listened, you would realize that there was also no plan, no policy, and most importantly NO UNDERSTANDING of the gravity of the situation she’s facing.

The “Aw, shucks” and “Doggone it”s and “Well, ya know, Joe”s were the scariest thing I’ve heard in weeks. Our economy is collapsed, but gosh if we just let that market run free we’ll be all good! And we’ll cut taxes! Cut taxes for rich people, and let the poor people take up the slack! Well, dontcha know you can’t rebuild the country unless you’re payin’ taxes! And rich people have too much money to do that, yessiree.

She also doesn’t know if Global Warming is man-made or not. Honey, the only people who don’t know if global warming is man-made or not are illeterate, in Third World Countries and, generally, more concerned with surviving famine and war than with changing the world. Those of us who have the priviledge to live in a prosperous and powerful country like America — where the poorest of the poor here look like wealthy demi-gods in sub-Saharan Africa — DO know that the world’s climate is changing, and we ALL seem to know that it’s man-made, or at the very least that it has something to do with OUR CARS. Hence the DRILLING you keep talking about. (Which your own freakin’ candidate opposes!) But how can I expect Sarah Palin to understand the dire and nuanced causes and consequences of global warming when she still hasn’t mastered the idea of evolution?

Also, if she says anything else about my reward being “in heaven,” I’m going to set her on fire.

Clearly, Sarah Palin makes me burn with a hatred as potent and intense as a thousand firey suns. I hate her because she is the last eight years personified. Last night she exposed herself as Bush II in a way we had never expected — colloquial, down-home, aw-shucks, winking, semi-oblivious. She has no idea about policy and is proud of it. She thinks her TOTAL LACK OF EXPERIENCE works to her advantage. She thinks the entire country is Alaska.

SARAH PALIN, THE UNITED STATES IS NOT ALASKA.

Do you know what we have down here? Black people, Latin people, Asian people, gay people, transgendered people, liberal people, conservative people, rich people, poor people, middle class people, girl people, boy people, Jewish people. As far as I can tell, you know about maybe three or four of those types. You feel contempt towards the coasts (that’s about 1/3 to 1/2 of America right there you just offended the fuck out of, lady), and you claim to be of “America’s heartland,” despite having absolutely no experience supporting farming or the American manufacturing industry. You would drill for oil wherever you can, with complete disregard for the people who live on and/or own that land. You would destroy American industry in the quest for American dominance in foreign policy — two things you know NOTHING about, as we saw last night. No, you’re only talent is in looking like Tina Fey and acting homey, and spouting catchphrases.

We are beyond a catchphrase president. We’ve had one for eight years, and we’re teetering on the edge of ruin.

Sarah Plain and John McCain will destroy American. Joe Biden and Barack Obama will at least try to fix this; if you listen to what they’re saying, they actually have a PLAN. They have a PLAN that has been proven to work in the past, they have a PLAN that will enfranchise as many people as possible, they have a PLAN that will put us, if not in first place immediately, on a steady path to reclaim our place at the top.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden have looked at American and seen our flaws, our problems, our struggles, our shortcomings. They have looked hard and looked long, and they have figured out ways to FIX THINGS, fix the little things that matter to us when living our lives. Fixing education, fixing (or improving) health care, creating a tax system that works FOR the middle class and not against it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden want to fight FOR US. McCain and Palin want to be RIGHT. And when all you care about is being right, you leave a trail of death and destruction behind you.

NO MORE. Barack Obama and Joe Biden, 2008. The Change we need, now more than ever.

Except, he’s not the President, or even part of The Fed, he’s just a Senator. With no authority to do anything economic, because he’s not on the Joint Economics Committee. So what he’s going to do is go back to Washington, and bluster on about the economy and his war hero status.

But, as Gawker points out:

We’re thinking this will very quickly come off as a “political stunt,” and also make McCain look like a moron next time he trots out the “I lie about Obama because he wouldn’t debate me 100 times from now until the election” line.

So here I go: SHENANIGANS, MCCAIN! You’re just fucking scared to debate.

What’s changed today in the financial crisis other than John McCain’s poll numbers tanking? Isn’t this the campaign equivalent of faking an injury when you’re down late in the 4th quarter? Note too that McCain was in the midst of debate prep when he made this decision.

Look at what appears to have happened. Obama reached out to McCain privately to agree to a shared set of bailout principles. McCain went off the handle again and tried to use the crisis as a way to call off the debates.

Ok, so this is sleazy, right? Barack Obama and John McCain were on the phone today trying to put together a genuinely non-partisan joint statement on the economy and the necessity of some sort of “package” to fix this mess we’re in. Obama called McCain to suggest this at 8:30 this morning. NBC: “McCain called back six hours later and agreed to the idea of the statement, the Obama campaign said. McCain’s statement was issued to the media a few minutes later.” That is seriously a dick move! Hey: “‘The debate is on,’ a senior Obama campaign official told ABC News.” So there’s that.

I feel like this awesomeness is just another reason to vote for the Obama-nator in Novemeber!!